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Friday, November 2, 2012

PARIS (Reuters) - Medical journal The Lancet warned that Sanofi's experimental multiple sclerosis drug Lemtrada may be too costly for patients and health insurers once it gets approved by regulators.

The journal, which published the encouraging results of two late-stage Lemtrada tests on Thursday, also criticized the drugmaker's decision to withdraw leukemia therapy Campath, the same drug given at a different dosage, depriving MS patients who had been using it off-label.

In an editorial accompanying the test results, The Lancet voiced concerns that Lemtrada would be priced higher than current MS drugs on the market and said the discontinuation of Campath may mean patients who had used it for MS would not be able to continue their treatment.

The injectable drug, chemically known as alemtuzumab, was sold until September 2012 under the name Campath as treatment for leukemia and given more frequently at a higher dosage.

Wednesday, October 31, 2012

MS (multiple sclerosis) damages the central nervous system and nerves, disrupting the nerve signals from your brain to other areas of your body. This creates primary physical symptoms like numbness, coordination problems and fatigue. There are additional psychological symptoms that often accompany the disease.

Depression

According to the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, severe clinical depression is more common among MS patients than in patients with other disabling conditions.

Sexual Dysfunction

The stress of living with a chronic illness combined with the neurological effects of the disease often cause irritability, severe depression, mood swings and the pseudobulbar effect (periods of uncontrollable crying or laughing).

Cognitive Dysfunction

According to the Multiple Sclerosis Foundation, nearly half of all MS patients are affected by cognitive dysfunction like memory problems, abnormal reasoning, slow processing of information and slowed speech.

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a disease in which the immune system attacks the myelin sheath, or the covering around the nerves, so nerve signals fail to function correctly, according to Kansas' Department of Health and Environment. MS affects parts of the nervous system, such as the brain and spinal cord, causing symptoms which may include speech and vision changes; coordination problems; fatigue; tingling and dizziness. At times, MS patients experience exacerbations in which new symptoms may appear or old ones may become more severe. While exacerbations may occur without a clear-cut reason, several factors are thought to trigger flare-ups.

Stress

Both emotional and physical stress can bring on exacerbations in people with MS. Because stress affects your immune system, being under a lot of emotional stress can lead to a worsening of your symptoms, according to WebMD. When your immune system is weakened by prolonged stress, your body cannot deal with MS symptoms as effectively.

Physical stress also depresses your immune system and may worsen your symptoms. Examples of physical stressors include illness, infections and lack of sleep. MS patients should get the flu vaccine to reduce the chance of getting sick and experiencing exacerbations.

Climate

Extreme humidity, heat or cold or sudden shifts in temperature may cause exacerbations in MS patients. Heat causes the already-damaged myelin sheath and nerves to send out signals even more inefficiently than usual, according to WebMD. Patients may experience exacerbations in very cold environments as well. Fortunately, exacerbations caused by extreme climate conditions are not permanent.

If you are in need of emergency shelter information and other critical resources as a result of Hurricane Sandy, please contact the Red Cross, your local Red Cross chapter, or FEMA.

The Society’s Information Resource Center can also help families affected by MS find the support and services needed in the midst of crisis, or after the initial emergency has passed. Contact an MS Navigator to learn about financial resources for temporary living assistance, medications, and other MS-related needs : 1-800-344-4867.

MS Views and News hopes that for all who were affected by SuperStorm Sandy, that you find the help you need and that your health remain on top of the list.

For those reading this posting, please forward it to someone else who might be in need, electronically or by phone

October 2012After the
settlement of a landmark class-action lawsuit this
week, Medicare will soon begin paying more often for physical,
occupational and other therapies for large numbers of people with certain
disabilities and chronic conditions such as MS.

While the
reach of change following the ruling is still uncertain, advocates hope that
Medicare will soon pay for many forms of therapy that it did not always cover
before. For people with MS, this may mean more approval for treatments for
spasticity and gait training to prevent falls.

Pending
approval by a federal judge, the settlement would end a lawsuit that accused
Medicare of allowing the contractors that process its claims to use an
“improvement standard” over the last few decades. To the Center for Medicare
Advocacy and the many other organizations that joined the suit, that standard seemed
to call for cutting off physical, occupational and speech therapy, and some
inpatient skilled nursing for many people who had reached a plateau in their
treatment.

Medicare
is supposed to pay for reasonable treatment of an illness or injury
as long as a doctor has prescribed it. For the sort of in-home
care that this week’s settlement may affect the most, a doctor must have
certified that you are, in fact, homebound and have prescribed treatment that
only a skilled practitioner can provide. (The “skilled practitioner” rule keeps
Medicare from paying for assistance with everyday activities like bathing and
dressing.)

The
settlement agreement does not describe itself as an expansion of Medicare
coverage. But it does state that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services
will revise the manuals their contractors use to make clear that coverage “does
not turn on the presence or absence of a beneficiary’s potential for
improvement from the therapy but rather on the beneficiary’s need for skilled
care.”

The
settlement also specifies that skilled care can qualify for Medicare coverage
even if it merely maintains someone’s current condition or prevents or slows
further deterioration. Certain patients who have had claims rejected will be
able to resubmit them.

It is
anticipated to take a couple of months before the judge approves the
settlement, and then a year or more until the Medicare billing contractors get
the newly clarified manuals.

Even so,
some patient advocates see no reason for people not to demand coverage that
maintains their condition or slows deterioration right now, given that Medicare
was supposed to be paying for it all along.

Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Last
month, the Myelin Repair Foundation gathered the entire MRF research team
together for our annual research meeting, to strategize our pathway moving
forward into myelin repair clinical trials.

Our
team of approximately 60 scientists consists of clinical neurologists, cell
biologists, immunologists, genetics specialists, government experts and MRF
scientific staff members gathered by the bay to collaborate and discuss the
latest advances in myelin research towards developing a myelin repair therapeutic.
The MRF Principal Investigators presented their latest scientific results
alongside with their post-doctoral/graduate students, on posters and in Power
Point presentations. Dr. Henry McFarland, head of
the MRF Clinical Advisory Board, talked about the history of MS, which began in
the early 1300s, with the first known case of MS-an ice skating nun named Saint
Liduina of Schiedam. At another session, MRF CAB member Dr. Al Sandrock, Chief
Medical Officer and Senior Vice President of Development Sciences at Biogen
Idec presented the industry perspective of MS drug development, along with its
unique challenges and opportunities to meet patient need.

By
gathering our world-class myelin experts together, from places as far as Europe
and Australia, the Myelin Repair Foundation facilitated important discussions
to strategize our path forward to bring a myelin repair therapeutic to multiple
sclerosis patients in 2019.

Corey Watson, a recent Simon Fraser University doctoral graduate in biology, his thesis supervisor SFU biologist Felix Breden and three scientists in the United Kingdom have just had their findings published online in Scientific Reports. It's a sub-publication of the journal Nature.

An inflammatory disease of the central nervous system, MS is the most common neurological disorder among young adults. Canada has one of the highest MS rates in the world.

Watson and his colleagues recently helped quantify MS genetic susceptibility by taking a closer look at GWAS-identified variants in the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) region in 1,854 MS patients. The region has long been associated with MS susceptibility.

The MS patients' variants were compared to those of 5,164 controls, people without MS.

They noted that eight percent of our 30-per-cent genetic susceptibility to MS is linked to small DNA variations on chromosome 6, which have also long been associated with MS susceptibility.

The MHC encodes proteins that facilitate communication between certain cells in the immune system. Outside of the MHC, a good majority of genetic susceptibility can't be nailed down because current studies don't allow for all variants in our genome to be captured.

"Much of the liability is unaccounted for because current research methods don't enable us to fully interrogate our genome in the context of risk for MS or other diseases," said Watson.

The researchers believe that one place to look for additional genetic causes of MS may be in genes that have variants that are rare in the population. "The importance of rare gene variants in MS has been illustrated in two recent studies," noted Watson, now a postdoctoral researcher at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York.

"But these variants, too, are generally poorly represented by genetic markers captured in GWAS, like the one our study was based on." Source: Fars News Agency

Published: October 26, 2012

Should the federal government cover the costs of many kinds of treatments for patients who aren’t going to get any better?

It didn’t, for many years. But after the settlement of a landmark class-action lawsuit this week,Medicare will soon begin paying more often for physical, occupational and other therapies for large numbers of people with certain disabilities and chronic conditions like Alzheimer’s disease, multiple sclerosis and Parkinson’s disease.

The two questions patient advocates were left with this week were just how many people may benefit from the clarification of the regulations and how quickly.

SYMPTOMS of MS

In multiple sclerosis , damage to the myelin in the central nervous system (CNS), and to the nerve fibers themselves, interferes with the transmission of nerve signals between the brain and spinal cord and other parts of the body. This disruption of nerve signals produces the primary symptoms of MS, which vary depending on where the damage has occurred.

Over the course of the disease, some symptoms will come and go, while others may be more lasting.

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